As awards season heats up, the Los Angeles Times notes that Ben Affleck’s best-director Oscar snub “was possibly the very best thing that could have happened to Affleck and his film.” Over the past few weeks, Affleck’s C.I.A. thriller has gained unexpected awards momentum with wins in the top category at the Golden Globes, the Producer Guild Awards, and last Sunday’s SAG Awards—meaning that, at the moment at least, many are expecting Argo to take best picture at the Oscars.

Awards season worked out much differently, however, for another filmmaker skipped over by the Academy in the best-director category: Quentin Tarantino. Although he did earn a surprise best-screenplay win at the Golden Globes, his spaghetti Western has been overshadowed by Argo and Lincoln. While some might attribute the comparative lack of awards-season love to the movie’s violence (which is not atypical of a Tarantino film) and the generous use of the “N word,” Django Unchained executive producer and Oscar sensei Harvey Weinstein blames himself for Tarantino’s snub. Speaking to Deadline, he explained:

I don’t want to use the word “robbed,” but Quentin Tarantino not in the running for Best Director? He is one of the greatest directors of our time. Here’s what I think happened on Django. We finished the movie December 1. We didn’t show it until a few days later. The race was early this year: the voting cutoff was January 3. We tried to show it to people in theaters, not on DVD. It’s an epic movie and that man put his whole life and heart into this. It’s his most important movie, his most important subject matter, and the idea of DVDs stopped me cold. And I stopped them. I wouldn’t do it. [...]

I delayed them. I wanted people to see it on the big screen. I told Quentin we’d probably pay the price at the Oscars, but it was the right way to see an epic period movie about a man who does not give up. Eventually, we gave out the DVDs but we paid the price for being late.

Even without a best-director nomination, Django Unchained will be relatively well represented at the February 24th ceremony. The film is nominated for Academy Awards in the best-picture, best-supporting-actor (Christoph Waltz), original-screenplay, cinematography, and sound-editing categories.